Iran has boosted its investments in militant and terrorist groups across the Middle East since the enactment of the 2015 nuclear deal, the nation’s top general who oversees U.S. Central Command said Tuesday.
“What it took 20 years for Iran to do in Lebanon with the Lebanese Hezbollah, they’re attempting to do in about five years with the Houthis in Yemen,” General Joseph Votel told lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee. “They’re accelerating their pace and their ability to do this.”
Asked whether Iran has reduced, maintained, or enhanced its investment in their proxy forces since the birth of the nuclear deal, Votel said, “I would characterize it as an enhanced investment in their proxies and partners.”
Tehran provides money, weapons, and tactics, to groups throughout the Middle East, in addition to “cultivating a network of operatives across the globe as a contingency to enable potential terrorist attacks,” according to an intelligence community assessment released earlier this month.
Votel also said that he is highly concerned about the expansion, both in quantity and quality, of Iran’s ballistic missile force. Iran holds the largest ballistic missile inventory in the Middle East.
“Like we go out to China Lake to test our weapons systems, they go to Yemen to test their weapons systems,” he said. “They are taking advantage of these opportunities to improve their capabilities around the world. I definitely am concerned about this.”
Iran supports Houthi rebels in the ongoing civil war in Yemen, and has provided them with “increasingly sophisticated maritime and missile attack capabilities.”
In response to questioning from Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, Votel said that Iran’s advancing ballistic missile arsenal, along with the export of those capabilities, represents one of CENTCOM’s main concerns. “These weapons pose the threat of widening the conflict out of Yemen, and frankly put our forces, our embassy in Riyadh, our forces in the United Arab Emirates, at risk,” he said.
Votel also told Cheney that “countering Iran is not one of the coalition missions in Syria.” After some pushback, he said that the U.S. is able to “indirectly” impede Iran’s objectives in Syria by maintaining relationships with Iraqi forces and Syrian Democratic Forces. “In many regards, these partners share the same concerns we do,” he said.
Even so, his remark appeared at odds with that of other administration officials. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson listed “five key end states for Syria” in January, one of which centered on diminishing Iranian influence in Syria and denying their “dreams of a northern arch” from Iran to Lebanon.
Asked later about the apparent contradiction, Votel said that he understood Tillerson to be referring to countering Iran in Syria as a broad “U.S. objective” rather than a “U.S. military objective.” He said that the military coalition is specifically focused on defeating ISIS.
Votel also had harsh words for Russia and its involvement in the Syrian civil war.
“Diplomatically and militarily, Moscow plays both arsonist and firefighter,” he said. “Fueling tensions among all parties in Syria—the Syrian regime, Iran, Turkey, the Syrian Democratic Forces, the United States, and other coalition partners—then serving as an arbiter to resolve disputes, attempting to undermine and weaken each party’s bargaining positions.”
Russia’s activities in Syria “are not focused on defeating ISIS,” he said, but on their own interests.
“Either Russia has to admit that it is not capable or it doesn’t want to play a role in ending the Syrian conflict here,” Votel later said, after criticizing Russia for failing to comply with a U.N. ceasefire recently put in place. “Their role is incredibly destabilizing at this point.”
Delaware senator Chris Coons and South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who just returned from a trip to the region, agreed Tuesday that the “tempo in terms of the potential for conflict in Syria has gone up.”
“The technologies that Iran is projecting into Syria and into southern Lebanon has gone up,” Coons said. “Iran’s willingness to be provocative, to push the edges of the envelope for what they’ve previously done to challenge Israel have gone up.”
Graham said neither the Trump administration nor European allies have a coherent plan to counter Iran and Russia in Syria. He described the moment as an opportune one for American leadership.
“I’ve never seen the Arabs and the Israelis so unified in terms of vision,” he said. “If America would step out front here, and push back against the Russians and the Iranians, I think you would have a lot of enthusiasm.”
“But it’s never going to happen unless we do it,” he added. “They’re not going to do it by themselves.”
